It was getting fairly late in the evening, and I was getting a bit panicky, because I couldn’t think of what to write for tonight’s blog. I hate that, not having even the ghost of an idea what to write about. But then, I suddenly had a thought; what have I learned this week from reading the 1925 Dorset book I’ve been raving about.
I read about The Dorset Natural History & Antiquarian Field Club sounded quite interesting, so I googled it and of course it closed down a long time ago, but the Dorset Museum is running something with a similar name so I shall look at that. But I quite like the idea of the field. Club, and wonder if I could restart it? Highly unlikely but not impossible – how do you register a club name? Can you even?
There was a story about the Aigle and it’s press gang in Weymouth which understandably upset the locals, and ended up in pitched battles between the groups. I have to confess that I hadn’t really thought about press gangs in Weymouth, but why not? After all, there is a big naval base next door.
I wanted to learn a bit more about the Aigle incident so I thought I would have a go with the AI tool, ChatGPT. Actually, it’s pretty good. Turns out that the Aigle was a French ship at anchor in Weymouth Bay. To which I thought, “hang on a second, a French warship sending a press gang into Weymouth for a bit of involuntary recruiting, isn’t that a bit much, why wasn’t that an act of war or something?” Back to chatGPT it transpires that the press gang were looking for french deserters not locals, but that either seems to have got lost in translation or the locals were protecting the French deserters. Must admit, I didn’t do that bit of follow up. It wasn’t an act of war anyway, as we weren’t at war with france at the time, but interesting though.
back to the field club for a bit; I could always start the Winfrith Newburgh & Wool Natural History Field Club. I’ll think about that. Could be fun.
Bills Posts 